The Funeral Owl by Jim Kelly

This barbie when she fell out with her stepfather and his boys was weeks ago. It’s something else that’s spooked her. Maybe she’ll tell her mum, but she’s taking her time.’
    â€˜She might tell you,’ offered Dryden. ‘If you asked nicely.’
    Humph produced a small pair of field glasses and looked east. ‘She should go home to her little sister and her mum. That’s where she belongs.’
    â€˜You don’t go home; why should she?’ said Dryden. The cabbie had lived alone since his divorce, in a rented house, yet he slept most nights in the cab. It was one of the things he shared with Dryden: a fear of domesticity.
    Humph scratched his Ipswich Town top. ‘I’m a grown-up. I’m allowed to do what I like.’
    â€˜Where’s Boudicca?’
    â€˜I left her with Mum. Grace likes taking care of her. It’s something to worry about that’s not her, that’s outside her.’ He pointed across the fen at a distant lonely tree. ‘
Sorbus Aria
– The Whitebeam.’
    Dryden followed his eyes. ‘Right. You can walk about and look for trees, you know. They don’t run away if you get near. It’s not a Big Game hunt.’
    Humph had the glasses up to his eyes again, whistling.
    Powell came back with a pint of orange squash for himself and a half of cider for Dryden. The Brook had access to a local apple press. The resulting liquid was milky and so dry it seemed to suck every particle of moisture from the body of the drinker. If Dryden held it to his ear he was just able to detect a slight effervescence. The brewers had no idea of its alcoholic strength but wrote six per cent on the label. Dryden judged they were out by a factor of at least two.
    The three drank in companionable silence. The pub looked out on the open fen from a deck, which held a gas-fired barbecue machine. In the far distance they could see lorries on the high bank of the road to Wisbech. A train trundled over the level crossing carrying sand. Humph counted the forty-one trucks out loud, then lifted his legs out from under the picnic table. ‘Back to work.’
    They watched him walk to the cab and lower himself into the front of the Capri, set the seat back, and close his eyes.
    â€˜Life in the fast lane,’ said Dryden.
    Powell had brought his copy of the
Ely Express
with him. ‘Just an update,’ he said, laying a palm across the paper. ‘There’ll be some arrests tonight in King’s Lynn. A bit of a sweep through the vice industry. CID’s pretty certain this is gang warfare, probably one gang falling out with itself. At the moment that means it’s strictly limited gang warfare, which is where everybody wants it to stop.’
    â€˜What’s at stake?’ asked Dryden. ‘What were they fighting over? It’s not a few hundred quids’ worth of lead off the church roof, is it?’
    Powell licked his upper lip. ‘No.’ The policeman seemed to deliberately relax his muscles, sinking slightly, his shoulders dropping, and Dryden wondered if it was a tactic to dissipate stress: ‘But the scrap metal trade is big money. Our information, and this is off the record for now, is that one of the triad gangs in Lynn had this trade sewn up. We’re talking about bulk sales of stolen metal. Iron, steel, aluminium, lead, zinc, copper. Ten years ago the legal copper price was a thousand dollars a tonne. Now you’d get eleven thousand a tonne, and more. The current thinking is that this triad gang sent a foot soldier up here to discourage some members of the gang branching out on their own.’
    â€˜And the crew on the roof didn’t take kindly to this discouragement?’
    â€˜Right. They clearly felt that Brimstone Hill, the West Fens, was
their
patch and they had a right to defend it. They made their point, pretty graphically.’ He drained his orange juice, pivoting his hand to tip the glass,